Drury Shows Depth, Maturity in Western Mass Final Win
CHICOPEE, Mass. – If you thought you knew the Drury boys basketball team, think again.
Four Blue Devils scored in double figures in Tuesday’s Western Massachusetts Class C Championship win … and none of them were named Jorge Bond.
Bond, the Drury junior who eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for his career back in December, contributed in plenty of other ways in the 72-50 win over Greenfield.
But on a night when the Blue Devils’ leading scorer finished well below his 27 point per game average, his teammates were more than up to the task.
Shane Faucher scored 18 points. Sammy Bullett added 14, and Connor Hinkell and Brayden Durant added 13 and 11, respectively, as Drury won its 11th straight game, improved to 19-2 and captured its first Western Mass title since 2023.
“We always fall back on each other,” Hinkell said. “We have each other’s backs. If Jorge’s not going, we go to Shane [Faucher] or [Brayden] Durant. We’re all looking to score, and we’re all just working for the same goal.
“I’m glad we could go get it today, for sure.”
Zane Kaley came off the bench and made two huge 3-pointers, including one at the buzzer, in a 12-point run to close the first half and send the Blue Devils to the locker room with a 38-24 lead.
Second-seeded Greenfield (15-6), which had a seven-point lead at one point and did not trail by more than four points until the final two minutes of the second quarter, never recovered.
And as deep as the Blue Devils have been at times this season, no one could have anticipated Drury going up 14 points at half-time before Bond scored his first point.
“I don’t want to say yes, but I don’t want to say no,” Drury coach Jack Racette said when asked if he would have expected to score 38 first-half points without his leading scorer making a mark in the scorebook.
“I trust my other guys, and they came up big when they had to. And we talked about that. What’s our worst nightmare? Jorge not scoring and us not scoring. That wasn’t the case tonight. We still put up 72 [points].”
Bond got his first bucket from the left wing with an assist from Faucher early in the third quarter to give Drury a 47-28 lead.
But even without his field goals, Bond already was making noise, grabbing five of his eight rebounds in the first half and passing out four assists - often at big moments.
He assisted on one of Durant’s three first-quarter 3-pointers to cut into a four-point deficit and make it 19-16. In the second quarter, Bond set up the first of Kaley’s 3-pointers early in the 12-0 run.
“He’s a basketball player,” Racette said of Bond. “I’m sure he’s frustrated right now. He couldn’t get some to go. And, as a player, you’re gonna have those nights. But I guarantee he’s pretty happy in that locker room with a Western Mass Championship.”
Hinkell started the pivotal second quarter run with a bucket in the post, and Bullett put back a rebound in transition before Kaley’s buzzer-beater.
Drury’s multiple scoring options struck a contrast with Greenfield, which got 33 of its 50 points from sophomore Grayson Thomas.
The Blue Devils showed a big crowd at Chicopee Comp on Tuesday that its 10th-grade class is pretty good, too.
“Those two sophomores, Bullett and Faucher, have just matured so much through the 20 games,” Racette said. “And that’s what we talked about at the beginning: We’ve got to build, we’ve got to get better.
“And they got better. They got better every day, and you could tell tonight. Bullett had a huge game. Faucher did his thing. That’s great team effort tonight.”
Drury, which started Tuesday as the top-ranked team in the commonwealth in Division 5, learns on Saturday who it will host in the first round of the D5 State Tournament that gets under way next week.
Photos from this game to come.